You do not have to pay for foreclosure listings

[soliloquy]

Tonight I was trying to find foreclosure listings in our area. Every website I went to said 7 day free trial and they wanted me to pay to look at foreclosures...can you imagine? I mean I bet you can but how rude.

Anyways, I was sitting here trying to think of a way I could see foreclosures myself and guess what....

All counties have a register of deeds or property look up website and generally you can search by owner name.

If you type in the name of banks, it will show you all homes owned by that bank. In my county (Mecklenburg County) they show you pictures of the realestate as well.

http://meckcama.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/RELookup/PropertyDetail.aspx

You can search by address, owner, etc.

I typed in owners like:

FANNIE MAE

FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSOCIATION

BANK OF AMERICA

WELLS FARGO

ETC.

And I came up with a pretty extensive "FREE" list of foreclosures. After that, I just went to google, plugged in the address and found a realtor that had it listed. It's been working great for me all evening so I thought I'd share. This might work in your county as well.

[Desert-Rat]

Awesome!!!!  Thanks for sharing!

[Anonymous]

There's a Sheriff's list in my county but it's wildly inaccurate.   The only accurate picture of what is really on foreclosure and actually headed to auction is the final bid notice, which is hard to find because they postpone auctions and change the dates a lot, plus with the housing situation a lot of last minute forebearances and court-ordered workouts complicate matters.

REO is a bit simpler.   Most of those houses found no bidders at auction so the seller is way motivated to unload the asset.    A lot of landlords/investment buyers got burned in the recession so the interest in converting foreclosures to rentals is low here.

[rezultsbydebi]

thanks, I really appreciate it

[Anonymous]

If you looked up the listings by bank ownership and found the realtors name, wouldn't it have been easier to just look up properties for sale from any realtor in your area? Once it's on the MLS, every realtor can see it and list it anyway...

[rena347]

Zillow lists foreclosures on the site. You can also use the filter function to specifically sort for foreclosures.

[kjm79]

Just be mindful of the info on recorder's sites as well as zillow.  Just because a house is listed as a foreclosure, or even REO, it could still be under a redemption period and may not be open to buyers yet.  So don't fall in love with anything that you find by using these search methods!!!  

[Anonymous]

You should never have to pay to view foreclosure listings. I think the kind of sites that charge are those that are affiliated with realtors that basically do all the work for you. Where I live, in Oregon, they keep a full list of current online.

Mod - link cut.